


Ghosts

by Dr_TJ_Eckleburg



Category: Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: Dan's a bit of a drunk, Herbert's a bit of a cocktease, Light pulse kink, Loser Dan, M/M, Middle-aged Dan/Herbert, Ridiculously unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:51:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5794087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg/pseuds/Dr_TJ_Eckleburg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping prison, Herbert West has re-entered Dan Cain's life to find the ex-Doctor Cain a sad shadow of his former self. All the same, old habits die hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

There was blonde woman sporting truly mammoth eyebrows and posing by a canvas forestscape. There was a young man in a mortar board. There was a family with two supremely snotty children and a father who looked like he desired very much to be anywhere but in front of that camera. None of them particularly looked like Dan, and for a moment Herbert feared that in the past thirteen years his partner had become one of those sad souls who populates their walls with the faces of strangers in some vain attempt to stave off loneliness.

Dan could have avoided that loneliness altogether if he hadn’t been such an idiot in the first place. But if he were an idiot, what did that make Herbert for coming back to find him?

At the end of the darkened hallway was something half-familiar: a mother Herbert had never met—and had no intention of ever meeting—and Dan, fresh-faced and in the midst of med school. He looked stupidly happy. Unenlightened, Herbert decided, and continued to pad down the hallway in the ill-fitted sleepwear Dan had lent him.

—

The kitchen was nearly as depressing, a cardboard box of a room that—perhaps by pure chance—happened to have a refrigerator in it.

Herbert was well on his way to crafting a suitable lab in the basement of Dan’s less-than-palatial abode. It hadn’t taken nearly as much convincing as he had anticipated. Dan hadn’t even the courtesy to be surprised when Herbert showed up at his door. 

“I just knew. I knew you’d be back. You have this habit of always coming back,” he’d said.

He let him stay. He even seemed eager to work with him again. But so far, Dan had proven himself to be easily distracted. This was nothing new, but the nature of the distraction had changed; the kitchen had quite a collection of bottles on the counter.

So, Dan was a bit of a drunk. Better booze than women, though both were regrettable pastimes.

Herbert could only hope that once he showed him the incredible advancements he’d made at Arkham State Penitentiary, it would be enough to pull his focus back. But in the meantime, Herbert was restless. The creeping feeling of being watched followed him mercilessly these days. A more tender-hearted person might have said it was due to a growing list of victims.

Not victims, he thought. Enemies. That was a far more suitable word.

Of course, his greatest _victim_ was sleeping just a few rooms over.

—

Dan slept with the door unlocked.

There was nothing in this house to indicate that the man who lived there had ever been a doctor. He was only a janitor at Miskatonic Tech now: Dan the Janitor who lived alone and occasionally drank himself into oblivion. 

What a waste. Herbert leaned on the door frame and looked at the sleeping form of his partner. Dan had no one to blame but himself.

“Are you here to kill me?”

Herbert cleared his throat as Dan sat up in bed to face him. “No. If I were going to kill you, I would’ve done it days ago.”

“Hmm. I’m in the clear.” He flicked on a dim light on the bedside table and sighed, shifting to sit on the side of the bed. “You’re just wandering around the house?”

“Who are the people on your walls?”

Dan shrugged off sleep and rolled his shoulders. “Cousins. Nephew. Mom. My sister.” He smiled sadly as Herbert gave a curt nod. “There’s no one, Herbert. There hasn’t been anyone else for almost five years, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He’d learned quite a lot in prison—he’d also gathered even more evidence against the fairer sex.

“Can’t sleep?” Dan asked.

“Thinking.”

“Regretting your decision to come find me?” Dan laughed bitterly.

Herbert narrowed his eyes and approached the bed more like an apprehensive cat than someone with an MD, a prison record or both. “No. I have much to show you.”

Dan reached to rub gingerly at his lower back, wincing. If it were some exaggerated display to prove he was getting too old for all of this, it wasn’t going to work. “Much to show me,” Dan echoed, still contorting his spine. “I just… why are you still doing this?”

“I’ve only just done my best work, Dan. Interestingly, most of that was done in solitary.”

“Without anyone else, then. Without me.”

The last thing Herbert wanted was some pity fest with the ex-Doctor Cain as the guest of honor. He rolled his eyes. “Dan, if you were so against the work, you wouldn’t have allowed me to stay with you again in the first place.”

He hated it when Dan shook his head like that, holier-than-thou with eyes to the Heavens. “Well… I doubt you know what guilt feels like.”

“Guilt?” Admittedly, he spat the word as someone might spit out some foreign cuisine to which their tongue was entirely unaccustomed.

“I didn’t feel it at first. I hated you when I turned you in. I was so happy to get rid of you. It didn’t even matter that they revoked my medical license. I wasn’t able to practice anymore, but at the time, I didn’t even want to. I was finally going to get my normal life back.” 

“Hmm.”

“But it never came.” He sighed, “And eventually the steady stream of dating ended, too.”

Herbert gave a vague shrug as he endeavored to sit beside Dan on the edge of the bed. “Congratulations. That was quite a boon, I would think.”

“You would. I was suddenly alone. And I realized that what was keeping me from ever achieving _normal_ was that guilt. It just kept growing. It stopped me. Sent me running away from the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids every time it was even a possibility.” Dan compulsively reached for the tumbler on his bedside table, disappointed to find it empty. “I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

“You always were unbearably sentimental.”

“And you always were great at pointing out a person’s faults.” Dan looked at his hands, worn with work and ropier than Herbert remembered them. “We had something back then, didn’t we?”

“An excellent working partnership,” he answered.

Dan smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Exactly that.”

Dan then pressed his mouth to his, and it was oddly chaster than anything Herbert recalled doing with him in their past life together. It was a kiss that lacked the over-sexed edge he used to exhibit, but had gained a sort of warmth and familiarity that took Herbert by surprise. 

It also tasted strongly of whiskey. Not a surprise.

Almost twenty years ago he’d given himself to Dan as a bribe. _Stay with me—help me—and I’ll give you what you need._

Now that warm familiarity tried desperately to worm its way into Herbert’s wooden heart.

It was not a pleasant feeling.

Thankfully, when Dan pulled back, beyond the glimmer of apology in his eye was a spark, a _need._ It was there for Herbert to grasp again, still desperate and thriving after thirteen years. Perhaps if he latched onto that need as he used to, he could keep that dreaded and disgusting warmth at bay.

As the proverbial _they_ always say: _old habits die hard._

Herbert brought their mouths together again, firmly gripping the collar of Dan’s t-shirt in one hand. He was understandably a little out of practice, but Dan was so starved that he didn’t seem to mind. Quite the contrary: he dropped back onto the mattress, successfully pulling Herbert on top of him.

“Why do you drink that swill? You reek of it,” Herbert said, pinning Dan beneath him.

“ _Why_ depends on the day.” He wasn’t too concerned, more interested in slipping his hands under the oversized t-shirt he’d lent Herbert. Dan now kissed him like some ravenous animal, as though he could white out thirteen years of failure if he just pretended it had never happened. If he closed his eyes, they could be back in the old house by the cemetery, and he’d never sold his partner for some mythical _normal_ life.

Pathetic, really, but all the same Herbert couldn’t help the hum of pleasure in his own throat.

Maybe it made Daniel Cain feel young or useful again. He had always placed far too much importance on sex, and it was a young man’s game. This didn’t erase the lines in his face or the aches in his back, but for now he could at least ignore them.

Herbert, who made his life’s work from the bodies of others, could not. But even he couldn’t hold time against Dan. They were both older, aching, softer in some ways but harder in others. When one dedicates one’s life to the elimination of Death, it is jarring to see His inevitable approach in one’s self. Hair loss, a softness around the middle, _exhaustion._ It was the exhaustion that bothered him.

Dan’s hips rolled up against him—wonderful, familiar friction, though a bit unpolished. Dan once apologized for an errant elbow. Herbert, however, did not apologize for sucking, biting his partner’s exposed throat. He made some remarkable sound at the gesture, and Herbert was again reminded of how wonderful it was to hold this over Dan, to make him want him.

Dan’s pulse raced under Herbert’s lips, and he felt the lapping waves of an arousal that only Dan’s shuddering heart had ever evoked. So much and so little had changed.

“I’ve wanted to do this ever since you showed up at my door last week,” Dan breathed against his ear, reaching between Herbert’s legs. He palmed him, stroked his cock through worn cotton, and elicited some soft but entirely unexpected moan on Herbert’s part. Quite rude, the bastard.

“Hmm. Your tunnel vision is showing, Daniel.”

“Oh God, you’re one to talk.” He gripped his hips, grinding against him, before slipping one hand around the back of Herbert’s neck to drag him down for another kiss. The hot taste of whiskey was something he was growing unfortunately accustomed to. This was part of Dan Cain now, and if he were to own him as he once did, he was going to own _all_ of him. The mounting hardness against the crook of Herbert’s thigh as they rediscovered a steady rhythm, the thrumming of Dan’s heart in his head; he was in the palm of his hand.

“Jesus, Herbert, yes—”

“I’m not sure you really deserve this.”

The statement had the desired effect, cruelly sucking the breath from Dan’s lungs. “...What?”

Herbert pinned Dan to the bed by his shoulders, keeping their bodies just far enough apart to be maddening. “You _sold_ me,” he said lowly.

“And I’m sorry! I told you! I’ve been suffering for the last thirteen years because—”

“Suffering?” Herbert traced a finger along Dan’s sternum, his belly and for a moment felt walls closing in on him. “This is not suffering.”

“Christ, I’m not looking to have a battle of the self-righteous, Herbert. Just… ugh, please don’t stop. I need this.”

“Hmm. Still thinking only of yourself, Daniel…” he purred and extricated himself from Dan. The ex-Doctor Cain looked stricken, pale as though he’d seen a ghost. Indeed, they had both been seeing ghosts all night. Herbert continued, “How do I know you won’t do it again?”

Dan’s desperate hands gripped Herbert and pulled him back so that they were face to face, half lounging against the headboard. His breath was hot against his mouth. “I wouldn’t. I promise. I need this, please.”

Herbert could hear his partner’s panicked pulse in his skull as he applied teasing, taunting fingers to more sensitive parts. “Need _what?_ ”

“What? This! What we used to…”

Doctor West pursed his lips and raised his brows in expectation. Booze or not, surely Dan’s mind hadn’t degenerated this much. Then again, he’d always had the tendency to neglect using his brain to its full capacity.

Dan swallowed hard. “You,” he said softly. “I need you. That’s what you want to hear, right? That’s all you ever wanted to hear. I need _you._ ”

There it was, that gleam in his eye, tongue darting tentatively over swollen lips. He was a pretty portrait of desperation sometimes, an image that occasionally crept into Herbert’s dreams and nightmares within the walls of Arkham State Penitentiary.

“I suppose I could oblige you,” Herbert finally admitted with something of a smile. 

Oh, all that was old was new again. Dan kissed him intensely. Faded t-shirts were discarded in favor of skin against skin. This body was far from the way Herbert had remembered it for all those years, but it was entirely his to explore and claim again.

It occurred to him to wonder what attracted him to Dan in the first place two decades ago. He had appeared to be exceedingly useful, if Herbert hazily recalled (admittedly the things Dan was doing to him at present were a touch… _distracting_ ). But he no longer had any access to bodies, no longer had the scientific zeal he had after Herbert first brought his cat screaming back to life.

And yet, here Herbert was. And here he would stay.

Swiftly, Dan pushed Herbert back onto the mattress with a resounding and altogether frightening _crack._

_“Fuck!”_

Herbert jerked backward. “What?” 

He was both frustrated and vaguely amused to see Dan reach to rub his lower back.

“Sorry,” he said, wincing.

Herbert arched a brow. “Daniel, you’re practically falling apart.”

“You’re telling me,” he grunted.

Herbert shook his head, pushed himself into a sitting position again and continued, “You know, I’m not expecting you to… to _move_ like you used to. You don’t have to impress me. I’m not another face in your endless stream of dating. Was that the term you used?”

Dan smiled, and oh, that detestable warmth was at it again. “You’re right. You’re not.”

—

Herbert easily could’ve left after Dan nodded off. Once upon a time, he would have. It was not so much sentiment that kept him in Dan’s bed, he told himself, but that crawling feeling of being watched and followed. To sit in the darkness of his own room would be to invite in those monsters he knew were still out there. He could look over notes he’d read a thousand times, but there was nothing to add until he had suitable facilities restored to him.

And still the eyes of a thousand creatures of his own creation were watching him.

For now, however, he could bask in the frustratingly endearing simplicity of sitting in the dim light with _his_ Daniel.

There was a part of Herbert that insisted quite vehemently that he was mad for settling in Dan’s house again. This man who slumbered beside him was no more valuable to him and to the work now than some bum he might’ve picked up off the street.

He quickly silenced that voice. If it kept talking, Herbert would have to deal with the fact that he _knew_ damn well Dan wasn’t useful. He hadn’t been since the very beginning, and it made him sick to think about it; for if he wasn’t associating with Dan Cain for his usefulness then why was he there?

The answer was far too ghastly and nauseating to entertain.

So he didn’t. But all the same, there he was.

And there he would stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'ed by the always-fabulous Backwards-Blackbird on Tumblr!


End file.
